Former POTUS and prospective first husband Bill Clinton made headlines after a confrontation with Black Lives Matter activists at a Philadelphia rally and is now backing down. The philanderer in chief has been increasingly punchy as he works to sell voters on putting himself and his corrupt succubus of a wife back into the White House and Thursday’s tiff makes for bad optics.

The Clinton’s nerves are understandably frayed due to Hillary’s baggage as well as an inability to beat back the Bernie insurgency have combined to complicate what was to have been a slam dunk instead of a dog fight. The only demographic that is overwhelmingly in the bag for Mrs. Clinton are black folks and the last thing she can afford is for Bubba to alienate them too. So Slick Willie is trying to make nice and smooth things over lest BLM begin showing up in force at future events which they probably will do anyway.

Former President Bill Clinton said Friday that he regretted drowning out the chants of black protesters at a rally in Philadelphia the day before, when he issued an aggressive defense of his administration’s impact on black families. His reaction thrust a debate about the 1990s into the center of his wife’s presidential campaign, one that has focused heavily on issues of race and criminal justice.

“I know those young people yesterday were just trying to get good television,” Mr. Clinton said Friday of the Black Lives Matter protesters who had accused him and Hillary Clinton of supporting policies that devastated black communities. “But that doesn’t mean that I was most effective in answering it.”

His statement did not quiet a raging storm of criticism. Still, it was a remarkable reversal for Mr. Clinton, who occupies a singular role in his wife’s campaign as a spouse and a popular former president who can sometimes make himself into a lightning rod.